


See?

by magpie_03



Series: Down the mountain range of my left-side brain [17]
Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Ableism, Angst, Bullying, Caring Josh Dun, Chronic Illness, Cyber Bullying, Disability, Epilepsy, Hospitalization, Hurt No Comfort, Loneliness, M/M, Public Humiliation, Sad, Sassy Brendon Urie, Seizures, joshler - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-25
Updated: 2019-11-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 15:53:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21560737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magpie_03/pseuds/magpie_03
Summary: Hi everyone,So this piece fell out of me. I am working on a longer update for the series but I wanted to post this story first. I'm going through a rough patch with my health, writing this story was difficult and yet it remains important to me.
Series: Down the mountain range of my left-side brain [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/792015
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14





	See?

"The concert will be sick! You two lovebirds need to get here, hurry up!"

" _We two lovebirds_?"

Tyler huffs. Out of Josh's mouth Brendon's words sound even weirder than usual. He still likes Brendon in his own way, sure, he's a bit over the top, a bit ... _Brendon_ , but he got all three of them tickets for a concert in Columbus. That alone doesn't justify the expression _lovebird_ but well, if the show is good then he might just as well roll his eyes at Brendon for good measure and be good with it.

He stares out of the window and tries to get his thoughts back under control, forcing them into the direction of Brendon, Josh, concert. He's got Josh's phone in his hands which is buzzing impatiently with incoming messenges, his feet on the dash, "and the world doesn't matter," like Josh would say yet right now, yet the world matters, very much so. Josh is steering his car through the rush hour traffic to get them to the train station where they are supposed to meet Brendon and Tyler feels a rising sensation in his stomach, a steady increase of anxiety and unease which has nothing to do with the concert or the traffic that's buzzing and blaring all around them. He shifts in his seat and pretends to double-check Josh's bag for his set of emergency meds just to get his body moving, to get the anxiety out of the way.

"You good?"

"Yeah, I just wanted to make sure that we packed the right set of the emergency medication."

"And?"

"All good."

"Great. Okay, here we are..."

With a final, tired _whump_ the car comes to a halt. Josh looks around. "Okay, I'm not sure if I'm supposed to park here but it'll only be a few minutes and then we're on our way to the venue anyway. It won't take long..."

While Josh turns around and calculates the probability of his car getting towed in the few minutes it'll take them to fetch Brendon from the train station he misses Tyler's initial seizure, a simple focal seizure that lasts only a few seconds but feels like a thunder before an almighty storm. Tyler starts to shiver all over as he's making his way into the train station. He can't walk or think straight anymore, he's forcing himself and his thoughts into the right direction, or just one direction at all the way you swim against a strong current. Josh - Brendon - concert - Josh - Brendon - concert - Josh - Brendon - concert - Josh - Brendon - Josh - Josh ... Josh...

Josh takes him by the hand. "Ty, are you okay? You're shivering, do you want my jacket?"

"N-no, I'm f-fine, j-just, j-just.... just... a little... err... what's the word..... the word.... the word...."

His tongue, a thick, useless piece of meat inside his mouth.

Josh stops abruptly, earning a few annoyed grumbles from strangers behind them. "Tyler? Hey, is everything okay with you?”

"I-I-I'm cold, I'm fine, I'm cold,, I-I..." Tyler starts to ramble nervously, trying to mask the storm which is about to go down inside his brain, he can feel it building up, the pressure, the all too familiar tightening at the temples which never stops being horrifying. Josh - concert - what was the third ... the third ... the ...

"I got you, Ty, alright?” 

_Josh ... Josh ... Josh..._

"Hey! You two! Get going! You're holding up traffic!"

"Jeez, okay...."

Josh shakes his head and makes his way through the crowded train station with his boyfriend by his side. Tyler isn't half as alright as he says he is, he can hear it, _feel it_ , but with some luck they're going to make it out of this place in no time and then they've got plenty of time to warm up in the car. _I want this, I need this, it'll be fun, us and Brendon, come on_ , Tyler said this morning, with a sparkle in his eyes and who is he to judge? Josh who has seen Tyler stay in their apartment in the dark for weeks on end? This is the first time they're leave their apartment together since summer, since they moved back in together, since Tyler took himself off his meds again, since everything fell apart and had to be put together piece by piece, breath by breath. He doesn't want to mess it up, not for Tyler, not for them. Josh straightens up and waves to Brendon.

"Brendon! Hey!"

"Hey lovebirds! Good to see you two!"

Brendon comes jogging over, Brendon who's larger than life, Brendon who's unapologetically himself, always. The second it takes Josh to let go of Tyler's hand to give Brendon a quick hug the the inevitable happens. Tyler's head turns to the right, his eyes follow, and by the time Josh and Brendon turn around Tyler's seizing already.

"Okay, I got him, do you have his other arm for support?" Josh asks, a little out of breath, still taken by surprise by how quickly Tyler went down.

 _No time to panic now. Hold him. Just hold him. Start counting._ 1-2-3-4-5. 6-7-8-9-10.

Brendon is panting a little . "Yeah. Man, that was so quick... I didn’t even realize...”

"I know... I know... make sure you're holding him, I need to get a tissue..."

While Josh looks for a tissue, an older lady approaches them. Watching from a distance, she just stands there, staring at Tyler and shaking her head a little as if he's a train that never comes. A disturbance, an annoyance to her routine. Tyler, meanwhile, isn't holding up traffic, he isn't blocking train doors or delaying departures. He's in the middle of a seizure. Not a grand mal seizure, something people on the street would instantly recognize. Instead, Tyler's muscles have gone limp, his muscle tone is _atonic_ (if you like the big, medical words) and if Brendon and Josh wouldn't hold him he'd drop to the ground. The empty look in his eyes speaks of a complex-partial seizure with loss of consciousness: Tyler's gone, he's far away, and he has no control over the movements or actions of his body. There's a string of saliva running down his chin, his body is slightly swaying from side to side and the dreaded wet spot between his legs is starting to form.

The woman stares Tyler up and down, up and down, up and down. The expression on her face, a face hardened by wrinkles and crusts of make-up, fluctuates between morbid curiosity and repulsion.

Brendon looks her straight in the eye without blinking once.

"Problem?"

The woman exhales loudly, turns on her heels and walks away, not without complaining loudly about "young people on drugs nowadays. _Disgusting_."

" _You're_ disgusting," Brendon hisses underneath his breath.

"What?" Josh turns back to Tyler and wipes his mouth. "What happened?"

"That woman..."

Josh sighs. "I know. I'd say let's get Tyler away from this place but we can't just drag him about when he's like this... I think we should just... oh, Tyler...."

Josh stares at the wet spot between Tyler's legs. "Okay. Okay. We need to wait until he comes around and then we're out of here. It's been only half a minute..."

They both look around, painfully conscious of all the attention they're attracting. More and more people are beginning to notice now, they're looking, whispering, glaring, staring, pointing. One man is leaning against a wall, pretending to read his newspaper when in fact, he's been watching Tyler with the kind of blatant, blunt curiosity reserved for those who can't park their car right. The man is watching Tyler's body as if Tyler was about to bump into another car. Yet this isn't about metal hitting metal, this isn't about a tyre hitting a curb or about a shattered side mirror. _This is a human being with a story, a history, a family_ , Josh wants to scream at him, _this isn't a car, this isn't a curiosity, this isn't yours to watch_. Josh wants to shake the man out of his stupidity, out of his stupor, he wants to question him, wants to know exactly why he's watching and staring like this. Is he proud of what he's doing? Will he go home to his wife and kids tonight and tell them? _Guess what happened today! I saw a guy having an epileptic seizure today and I did nothing! Amazing, huh?  
_

Another man, in a suit and tie, is standing right next to them. He looks right through Tyler as if Tyler's seizure is a TV show he simply isn't interested in. As if Tyler's body was made of air, air and inconvenience.

There'a family with two kids, two toddlers. They're shielding their kids, they're standing with their backs to Tyler as if Tyler's body was a bad car accident or a roadkill they don't want their kids to see. Josh can make out the kids peeking through the legs of their dad though, they're twins, a boy and a girl with the same bright, red hair. A handfull of freckles, too. They're gazing at him with wide eyes. Is it Tyler's seizure or Josh's pink hair that shines in the harsh fluorescent light or both? Josh wouldn't mind if they came running over. He would explain to them why Tyler looks the way he does right now. Sure, they wouldn't understand words like epilepsy and seizure but they're just kids, they're still curious without judging the world, without judging themselves and their experience. But nothing like that will ever happen. The backs of their parents turned towards Tyler, their outstretched arms, their " _don't look sweetie_ " tells them nothing but one thing: that Tyler doesn't belong, that Tyler is different, a belief that will harden into harsher words, meaner words eventually.

A young woman is so obviously uncomfortable, so _unhinged_ by Tyler's presence she's trying to disappear into her phone. She's holding it so closely to her face her nose is touching the screen. Either that or she's just really, really short-sighted and forgot her glasses, which Josh wants to believe, he really does because that lie doesn't hurt half as much as he truth does. He can see it in the way she's standing a few feet away from them, moving farther and farther away as if Tyler was contagious or a rabid animal. Josh can see it in the way the color of her fingernails, the color of her lipstick and the color on her cheeks match, it's all the same shade of red. She's obviously concerned about what she looks like in public and a seizure never looks good, does it?

Josh can see all of it, every single detail. The image is frozen inside his mind, it's burned into his retinas.

1-2-3-4-5. 6-7-8-9-10.

The seconds feel like bricks dropped right into his stomach. Seizure time is thicker than chewing gum and it's always worse when you're exposed to the cruelty of the world.

Always.

There's a group of drunk, chanting football fans coming towards them and one of them has his phone out. Josh stiffens.

"Brendon..."

Brendon eyes them. "I know. I might need to let go of Tyler's arm in a second, can you stabilize him on your own?"

Josh pushes his weight against Tyler's body. "Yeah. I can try, I just don't want them to film Tyler, okay?"

"Understood. I just... shoot, they're coming nearer. Okay, maybe they won't notice us. They're drunk and there's a McDonald's near us. Let's hope for the best."

As if the words epilepsy and hope ever fit together. The fans goof around, take selfies and slowly come nearer. It's clear that they're bored, looking for something to do, something to laugh at. It doesn't take long before they notice Tyler. They're beginning to circle him like a pair of hungry hyenas.

"Yo, watch this!"

Giggling. The unmistakeable _click_ of a camera.

"Hey! You! Put the phone down! Yes, you! Put the phone DOWN!"

Immediately, Brendon takes after them. Josh's thoughts start to race as he struggles to stabilize Tyler, Tyler who still hasn't regained consciousness. This is it. They're over 2 minutes now, the magic 2 minute threshold which means Tyler needs his emergency meds now, meds he can't access, not with Tyler's full body weight pinned on him. Josh tries to make eye contact with people who pass by, pleading them silently to help him. 

People don't even dare to respond. They look away in helplessness, confusion, shame.

No one offers to help. Yet everyone's gawking.

1-2-3-4-5. 6-7-8-9-10.

Another minute passes.

3 minutes.

Brendon still hasn't come back. Josh's breathing quickens. Tyler needs his emergency medications now, _every second now, where on earth is Brendon?_

"We found him. Looks like a seizure. The ambulance is on its way."

Flashing lights. Blue gloves.

Josh groans.

~~_Fear fear fear_.~~

It is in this moment that multiple strangers pull out their phones. With their faces hidden behind their cameras it is impossible to make out who started to film. That doesn't matter anyway, now that someone started everyone's joining in. The video will appear online in a few hours to come. It'll earn clicks, it'll get people talking. It will show a young man, dressed in all black, struggling and shivering, scratching and fighting the emergency physician and two paramedics who stand around him with their hands in blue gloves. It will show Tyler, Tyler who has made it out of the seizure, Tyler who can hardly walk and everytime the gets up and tries to run away from the paramedics he falls over, like a marionette whose strings have been cut.

It'll show Josh, Josh who is desperately trying to explain, showing the paramedics Tyler's medical ID and his emergency meds, even the sheet Tyler carries in his rucksack with his address, diagnoses, and emergency contacts as well as their phone numbers, _Mom. Dad. Josh,_ written in handwriting so impeccable it looks like it's drawn on the page by his mom, "if you get into trouble, honey, okay?"

The video will show paramedics who won't listen, they won't understand that the last thing they should do is to hold Tyler down, _do not restrain him, please, he's going to be okay, can't you see_. They won't understand that Tyler shouldn't be given certain emergency medications because they make him lash out. That it's all good, Tyler has come out of the seizure, no ambulance needed, please, please, _please_.

It'll show an emergency physician who will ignore Josh, who will hold Tyler down and give Tyler the wrong meds anyway. It'll show Tyler who will lose it, who will lash out, who will kick and fight the paramedics until he is restrained on a gurney.

The video will earn comments about _drinking_ and _drugs_ and _junkies_ and _the police._ The comments will feature words Tyler used to hear at school, whispered in halls, giggled in lessons, and scribbled on sheets of paper that appeared in his locker. _FREAK, SPAZZER, RETARD_ , all of them in call caps. As if the names on their own aren't enough.

No one will comment on the inappropriateness of filming someone this helpless and putting the video online for everyone to see and judge. Like or dislike.

The video will earn a lot of likes.

And laughs.

Laughs more than likes. They won't know, those who clicked like and laughed, together with their friends, pointing at the screen, they won't know how much it hurts to be on the receiving end. To be laughed at, to be liked, for _this_.

They won't know that this is what the postictal state of a complex-partial, epileptic seizure can look like. They won't know what it feels like to be seen like this. When you're at your worst, when you're this helpless and vulnerable, when you're exposed, stripped bare, and you can't defend yourself.

And everyone's gawking.

They won't know, those who laughed, that the man in black isn't an attraction or a human freak show to be watched for entertainment. They won't know that he's a person, a human being with a story. They won't know that he's a son, a brother, a friend, a boyfriend. They don't want to know, after all. All they want is a moving image on a screen.

There will be a comment, though, "isn't this the singer from twenty one pilots?????" and that is enough for the video to go viral. It'll get reposted and shared, over and over again, with rumors spiraling out of control, stories posted and reposted in comments because Tyler never wanted the label _epileptic_ to get stuck to his music, _no one was to know, no one was to know,_ and now everybody knows just as much as the strangers who filmed the video do: nothing. All they see, all they know is that Tyler Joseph, the singer from twenty one pilots drooled and pissed himself in a public train station in Columbus, Ohio. 

And everyone's gawking.

The video ends as Tyler is loaded into the ambulance. There's giggling in the background, giggling in the background over a high-pitched, screeched _n-nn-n-ononononooo-ooooo_ as a figure in black clings to a man with bright pink hair, holding on for dear life. 

And everyone's gawking.

See?


End file.
